Life – Page 11 – The Creative Salad

An Ethical Compromise

Here’s an example of how parenthood changes us, though perhaps not in the way you might expect.

Before having kids, my husband and I focused on eating locally. We shopped primarily at the farmers markets and would never buy produce from South America.

Here we are, four years later, with a fruit-loving daughter, and I don’t hesitate when I see organic blueberries grown in Chile for sale at Costco. In fact I’ll go out of my way and drive twenty-five minutes into town to buy more. Ethics, be dammed.

It’s hard enough to get our daughter to eat when we have all these options.

Perhaps a few years down the road, I’ll reclaim my dignity and let our Costco membership lapse. For now, I’m pretending I don’t know myself and hoping in the car… those blueberries taste good. (Of course, they don’t taste as good as those local Sonoma blues but we need to wait until the summer for those…)

Handmade Watercolor Thank You Notes

You may be wondering where all of our craft project posts have gone. Well, instead of our typical morning craft project (that we LOVE to share with you here on the blog!), we’ve been writing birthday thank you notes.

Many, many birthday thank you notes.

Our daughter surprised us by announcing that she was going to hand-write her thank you notes. She’s doing a beautiful job, but because she’s, well, four years old, it’s taking a rather long time. She can only write about one thank you note a day. Make that, one note every other day. I don’t want to rush her, but that means we haven’t been doing that much else in the sit-still-while-we-do-a-project department.

We have many more notes to write. (Thank you all for your generous presents!)

Aren’t her notes precious?!

See our budget-friendly watercolor postcards tutorial for instructions on how we made the cards.

I have to eat WHAT to stay pregnant?!

I’ve written before about our struggle to stay pregnant and I thought I would share with you the latest chapter in our fertility journey.

Above photo: Dinner: beef, salad, farro, potatoes by Sarah Gilbert

I’m seeing an acupuncturist who specializes in fertility. I think she’s rather brilliant and knowledgeable and — I mean this in the best possible way — very, very Sonoma County (for example, the clinic bathroom has a composting toilet — our daughter was enthralled!).

On our first meeting we discussed my health history and she threw me a curve ball: she really wants me to eat red meat. Not chicken or turkey, but RED MEAT! I haven’t eaten red meat in at least twenty five years. In fact I have no memory of ever having eaten red meat, although perhaps my parents will remember better and post about it in the comments. (Mom, I remember you cooking meatballs; did I ever eat one?!)

Even though I may not remember what red meat tastes like, I know that I really don’t want to eat it.

For the majority of my life I’ve been a pescatarian (a vegetarian who also eats fish) who only started eating seafood to get more protein into my diet. If I could live without dairy, I would be a vegan. With the exception of a bowl of chicken soup at sleep-away camp and a bite of roast beef in college, I haven’t eaten meat since elementary school.

That being said, I’ll do just about anything to stay pregnant. After all, transitioning from a vegetarian to omnivore diet and seeing an acupuncturist helped one of my closest friends become pregnant. It might really help!

Plus, doesn’t Sarah Gilbert’s photo, above, make meat-eating look delicious and healthy?!

And so I’m trying to acclimate myself to the idea of cooking with beef broth…

Never mind that the rest of the family are pescatarians and are, therefore, going to be eating something different.

Stay tuned!

January is the New June

Instead of typical rainy winter weather, we’re enjoying summertime here in California’s wine country. 70 degrees, sunny… I keep reminding our family to wear sunscreen. It’s hot out there!

And so we’ve been doing all sorts of fun summer activities like scootering on the trail every day and biking into town with our friends’ awesome Burley Bee Bike Trailer:

Each day I walk through the house, opening each window wide, and sighing deeply as I breathe in the loveliness that is western Sonoma county:

Oh, and the birds loved their popcorn garland treat:

Our daughter is already talking about next year’s garland for the tree and doing it all over again. I love making family traditions!

Happy winter!

An Excuse Not to Do the Dishes

In this period after the holidays, when we set aside our regular tasks for several weeks to celebrate, I feel as though I have so much catch-up to do and find myself feeling overwhelmed.

There are so many things I want to do, with barely enough time in the day to do the things I need to do. I feel as though everywhere I turn there is a giant pile of things that need attending, scrubbing, filing, cleaning, or caring for. This cycle of rinse, wash, repeat wears me down as I tackle meal-preparation, laundry, dishes, toy pick-up, house cleaning, bill paying, and daily housekeeping tasks.

In times like these, I need to ask for help (husband! daughter!) and then take a step back. In reality the only thing that matters is caring for our daughter, caring for myself, caring for my husband.

I recently spied this quote on Pinterest and think (hope!) it’s spot-on:

Even though my to-do list is pages long and I feel overwhelmed by the multitude of tasks, I can focus on the most important part of my day: the smiles, the laughter, the joy in being a parent, in being a spouse, in being a friend. Life is short. Every moment counts.

Now excuse me while I go hug my kid and kiss my husband. Dishes be damned.

p.s. Want to hang this quote in your kitchen too? Download a free pdf of the above poster here.